Rookie Mistake

July 10, 2010 at 11:45 am

To escape the confines of the guest house where we’ve been holed up transcribing most days, I took the bus down to Manda Hill shopping plaza where they have a great little café that was referred through the expat community. On my way back, I made a class rookie mistake. You see, I’ve become quite spoiled in Lesotho and it’s been several years since I’ve had to take a kombi, so I was unprepared for the minibus madness.

As I was leaving the shopping center, I had several conductors approach me. Rather than choosing quickly and moving confidently to the minibus of my choice, I allowed the conductors to fight over me until I found myself pushed into the door of the one closest to me. As I was being corralled, I was so busy kicking myself for my mistake that I got distracted from watching the hands of those corralling me. And so I bid adieu to my new computer mouse. What a Zambian conductor is going to do with a wireless mouse sans receiver is beyond me. At least that’s all they got. I hate minibuses.